


Live Long Enough

by starry_pseudonym



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Fanart, Slow Burn, Time Turner (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-03 07:02:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17279309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starry_pseudonym/pseuds/starry_pseudonym
Summary: "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."Hermione's unexpected journey to the past reveals a version of history that hadn't been taught in school.  Her revelation of the truth could mean a new tide for the war she left behind. New magic, new discoveries, and a new fondness for a certain Head Boy change everything.Who's the real villain in the story?





	1. First

 

 _"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." -_ The Dark Knight

At this late hour she rightfully expected the department’s offices to be quiet with nary a witch, wizard, or creature to stir in the void that claimed the vacant corridors and atrium. It was surreal to muse, though she tended to when left to her rampant thoughts, that all of _this_ – the vast beauty that befell the silent Ministry at midnight – had been nearly lost only two years ago.

Enchanting, though hardly the same could be said during the day time when the place was rife with busy bodies who kept to their corners as if nothing had transpired, nothing had changed, nothing had been learned. She was, admittedly, not far from being guilty of that as well, the complacency of a hard-fought victory now commonplace even amongst the veterans of war. It was just easier to forget, more accepted to gloss over in polite conversation than it was to beleaguer with the details of loss, regret, and consequence.

That, she knew, was how it would happen again.

Such as tonight, at the Ministry’s annual New Year’s Eve gala, when the groundswell of laughter and cheers erupted across the grand ballroom, followed moments later by the raising of champagne flutes quite unlike the raising of sullen wands, she knew she had to extract herself or else risk another fluttering of her pulse that always ended in short, labored breaths and a spiraling of the room.

She could feel a stranger’s eyes on her as she brushed aside shoulder after shoulder to escape. The pins nestled in her crown of curls were starting to unseat with every slight jostle that she met on her way to the staircase leading to the exit. It was the perfect time, with attentions on the clock one minute before ringing in the new millennium. It was a small price to pay, upsetting her friends – namely Ron who was under the misapprehension that they had come together as more than. Ginny would understand, but above all Harry would not question what had drawn her away from the crowd.

It was no different than why she had chosen to work in the International Magical Office of Law after the war, when so many other ventures had offered her opportunity. Here, where she now stood after the short lift ride to the fifth level, she was anonymous. Bright though she was still lauded to be, Hermione concentrated her shrewd intellect on matters that did not require the limelight: matters such as regulation, policy, and diplomacy in the most “dull” and “mind-numbing” manner possible, never requiring an audience as a junior associate, and hardly demanding of anyone’s attention except for the Ministry’s archivist whenever she was in the heat of some fascinating legal research.

Further, her profession rarely necessitated the use of magic.

Upon dropping her crystal-studded clutch onto her desk, Hermione slumped into her chair and finally, at long last, closed her eyes. Magic. That had been the crux of it all, hadn’t it? Only recently had these injurious thoughts crept into her ruminations. It would be a betrayal to all that she and her friends had fought for, and certainly dismissive of the sacrifices her parents endured on her behalf. But as she sat in solitude, the last glimpses of the moon disappearing from the high-set window and extinguishing the flicker of pale light from her diamond earrings, she wondered: what was it all for?

Aside from survival against those who would want her kind dead, what had they achieved? It was a dreadful kind of stagnation that on nights like this – and there were many – that she found herself staring into nothing, with neither despair nor hope to drive her daydreams in any one direction. The pile of parchment two heads high would be there in the morning; the gossip of the gentry would make the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ instead of the crimes of the rogue remnants of the Dark Lord’s followers.

It was tidy. It was business as usual. It was heartbreaking.

After several minutes, her breathing calmed to its docile rhythm, well enough for her to open her eyes – prettied for the occasion with a sharp wisp of ink and dramatic, full lashes.

There, as if appearing for the first time, she confident that it hadn’t been there all along, was a small black box with a silk dark green ribbon tied around it with elegant, purposeful loops. She glanced around the empty, dark-but-for-the-sliver-of-moonlight office, stepping just enough upon her high heels to peer around the mountain of paperwork and make sure her office mate wasn’t playing tricks on her.

“Odd,” she whispered as her right hand unconsciously lingered at the hem of her lacey cocktail dress, inching for her wand. Once in her grasp, she murmured _Finite Incantatem_. Nothing but stillness. That wasn’t enough to convince her the box wasn’t cursed. Perhaps it was a gift from Ron – a peace offering after yet another row the other night when they were all out for holiday drinks. The choice of color was not usual for him, but then again the Irish had just won the Quidditch World Cup a few months back, and that meant green was a tolerable pigment for now.

Finally putting instinct before intelligence, she set her wand down on the desk and gently grasped the box with both hands. It was fairly light. Her fingers pulled loose the ribbon and lifted the lid. She gasped and nearly dropped the box and with it, its precarious contents. Resting inside on a bed of black velvet lay what she believed to be impossible: an unmarred, perfectly preserved golden time turner. Nestled before it was a small, faded scroll, tightly curled and thin. She put down the box in order to pull open the scroll to quickly read the beautiful and perceptibly masculine script, breathing an after thought:

_**“History is written by the victors. Learn of his struggle.  
** _ _**Act like a witch but think like a muggle.”** _

_What?_ No sooner had she finished reading the tiny note the time turner’s hourglass began to glow an eerie white light. Hermione was familiar with the delicate device – as familiar as one could be what with all of them assumed to have been destroyed years ago – and had never seen one behave in such a way, especially unmolested. Her fingers hovered above the ornate, interlocked rings, careful not to touch but nevertheless curious if its light was radiating heat, or something else.

A tingle sparked in the space between her fingertip and the outer-most ring. She quickly pulled her hand away but it was too late. The chamber that encased the sands of time began to spin, the rotations per minute exceedingly faster with each passing instant. _This can’t …_

Her thoughts were interrupted with a blur and a pull, as if her insides were being yanked through her navel, back again, and up through the invisible thread that cut through her core. She was simultaneously being split apart and put back together, all while the world around her was a suffocating pressure of stars, whirling wind, and darkness. No sound could escape, no light, as though a vortex of gravity had engulfed every particle around her, within her, and then spat them out into …


	2. Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will likely update once a week but I wanted to get this story started. I know it starts off with some familiar tropes but I promise there will be some twists that hopefully add spice and intrigue. I've had this idea in my head for a while but never the courage to write it out, so here goes.

Stone. Cold, wet stone. Everything above her was circling, but what she could make out from her dizzied awakening was torchlight to her left, the fragments of vision coming back into place through circular glares in her periphery. _Ow_ , was all her thoughts could muster, and for that she was convinced she had a concussion. It was a slow haul up to her hands, slender legs in sheer nylons sticking out from the fringe and tulle of her skirt, and her riotous mane of curls having finally spilled free.

Seconds ticked by; she could hear them, one by one, because the time turner lay innocently in her lap – but where was her wand? _On my desk where I left it, you stupid …_ she heard a scrape. Shuffling quickly to her feet, the necklace carefully slipping inside her hidden pocket, Hermione looked around. Familiarity began to work its way beyond the immediate panic she could feel swelling inside the pit of her throat. Her surroundings were no longer that of the Ministry, not even that of London.

She was back at Hogwarts.

 _That’s impossible_. _A time turner doesn’t also manipulate space. Unless … whoever wanted me to find it also made it a portkey._ Concurrently being ripped through time and space was unheard of; in all her research, she had never come across such an account. Granted, her research had been limited to the interests of her third year class schedule, but something of that magnitude would surely have made its way into prominent literature.

She wanted to wretch, but the onset of nausea was disrupted by another scrape. She flitted to one side of the darkened hallway; her heels, which she forgot she was wearing, made quite the announcement along the acoustics of the quiet castle. She groaned silently.

“Who’s there?” The voice – a deep octave that reverberated off the ancient interior façade – was not known, but it had to have been either an older student or professor. She wagered a prefect given the presumed hour of late evening, given the extensive use of torches to illuminate. What would she say to the student? That she was a nostalgic alumna too eager to walk these hallowed halls to wait for homecoming weekend? Without knowing when she was, it wouldn’t do to believe she ought to be caught by just anyone. She needed to get her bearings.

 _Act like a witch_. The enigmatic scroll was not helpful, but Hermione knew those words had something to do with why she was there. She was well-versed in wandless magic, but doubted she could muster a disillusionment charm, however temporary, right this minute with her heart rate through the roof. _Think like a muggle_. That she could do with ease. She just had to _think_. Taking a steadying breath, she leaned down to grasp at the heel of her shoe; slowly pulling it off her foot, then doing the same with her other, she now clutched both heels in her right hand, her other hand pressed softly to the wall. She waited. Perhaps the boy had wandered off when no response met his inquiry.

She was just about to lower her eyes in relief when a shadow emerged from around the corner not but five feet from where she stood, creeping along the floor and enveloping her bare feet. She gasped as the shadow lengthened and the telltale shape of a raised wand pointed at her.

“Snuck out of the ball have we, miss …?”

Panic. Not logic. Panic reigned. She didn’t hear him, couldn’t make out his accusatory tone, didn’t even really see him when she finally settled her eyes on the figure consuming her flickering gaze. All she saw was a dangerous silhouette, and no measure of reason could dictate to her a sensible reaction.

So she ran. Hermione wasn’t particularly athletic, but she had honed her speed after a year on the run; at the end of her legs were sturdy ankles, which gave way to determined pounding on the ground as she hurried in the opposite direction. It would have been easy for him to cast any number of hexes her way, except that she had rounded another corner just as fast as he could make sense of what just occurred. That bewilderment was fleeting.

“Get back here!” she could hear him shout angrily. That wasn’t good. In her haste all she could discern of the boy – man? – was that he couldn’t have been a student. He was in a suit and tie. A student she could evade, but if he was a professor then she’d likely be discovered an intruder at his second glance of her.

She needed to know when she was. He’d of course tell her if he wasn’t already chasing after her, mind likely made up that she needed to be stopped, not helped. _Just run until you can think_. Her breathing was coming in shorter rasps as she started to lose steam. Chancing a glance backward, she spotted him just as he cut short the corner, clipping his shoulder with a hiss. It was nearly too late when she turned back around to realize that the opening before her wasn’t another deserted hallway in which to seek refuge. It was a chasm, leading through to the great chamber of moving staircases.

And one such staircase was not under foot. By the time her mind caught up, her feet were not able to slow – it was either skid and collapse in a tumble, and hope that she could grasp the landing before falling over the ledge, or jump.

She jumped.

“Aaah!” she cried out as her sternum collided with the shelf of the staircase wending its way to the left but twenty feet below where she had lept. Her upper arms scrambled to gain purchase of the landing, fingers desperately splayed and shoes somewhere in the midst of her fall having been let go and forgotten.

“Are you insane?!” She almost laughed as she heard the man cry out above her, but the wind had been knocked out of her and she was positive she had bruised a rib or two in the impact between bone, flesh, and stone. She pulled herself up after a few more whimpers, then rolled onto her side. She was just about to hoist herself to her knees when she heard another voice connect with the air from behind her.

“Oy! Riddle! I thought you said you didn’t have a date for the Yule Ball?”

Suddenly she wheezed and shuddered, her head hanging in defeat between her shoulders. Beyond the curtain of untamed curls she could see emerge from the opposite landing a blonde-haired boy, broad in shoulder and chest, and also attired not in uniform but in dress robes. He appeared familiar, but that wasn't what had her seizing and backing up on her bare feet and the palms of her scratched and battered hands.  _Riddle._

_Think like a dead muggle._


End file.
